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The Promised Land, Barry Maitland

REVIEW

The Promised Land, Barry Maitland

Review Written By

Andrea Thompson

Thursday, February 14, 2019

It has been a long time between drinks. Author Barry Maitland has always had a dab hand with the police procedural, and it is a relief to once again encounter the sensibilities and stoicism of his stellar creations David Brock and Kathy Kolla. Paired even in retirement, the two continue in THE PROMISED LAND to bring an intensity and realism to the page that consistently makes sense and entertains.

Who doesn’t love a good literary mystery also?

If you’re a bit slow to the party and picked this title up in the last month without having read any of the series priors, fear not. The new reader is fed enough back story to keep up, and the regular reader won’t be encountering any onerous repetition of what they already know. Barry Maitland dropping another Brock and Kolla serves as a timely reminder as to why we read investigation centric crime fiction, with all of its coal face examinations of both the act and the community in which the killer and victim once existed together.

Maitland’s Brock and Kolla series is always one of the first that springs to mind when offering crime fiction recommendations. THE PROMISED LAND delivers another confident dose of elegantly constructed crime writing that is both insightful and challenging to unravel. Tuck yourself in, you’re in good hands.

Brock and Kolla return in an enthralling new mystery from a master of the genre.

Newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Kathy Kolla investigates a series of brutal murders on Hampstead Heath. Under intense pressure to find answers, she arrests the unlikely figure of John Pettigrew, a failing London publisher who lives alone on the edge of the Heath.

Pettigrew's lawyer calls on recently retired David Brock for advice, and soon, unable to resist the pull of investigation, the old colleagues, Brock and Kolla, are at loggerheads.

At the heart of the gripping mystery of the Hampstead murders lies a manuscript of an unknown novel by one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. Brock believes that its story will unlock the puzzle, but how?